Fast Facts
- Named for: “Light stone” Liechtenstein Castle in Southern Austria
- Capital: Vaduz
- Long/Lat: 47.1 N/9.3 E, 6000 miles or 11 hours East of Castro Valley
- Population: 41,232 or 0.8 CVs
- Size: 62 sq mi, 4 CVs
- Avg temp in April: 54F/12 C mountains!
- Median household income: ~$150,000
- Ethnicity: 67% Liechtensteiners, 9% Swiss, 7% German (pasty white people)
- Main industries: Precision manufacturing (e.g. dental equipment), financial services (low taxes)
We move from islands to mountains: Central Europe, on the other side of the world from Kiribati, literally and metaphorically. Liechtenstein is one of only two double land-locked countries, which is a thing because humans now must have special statistics for everything. Double land-locked means that it’s land-locked between two other land-locked countries, in this case between Switzerland and Austria. If they could carve out a country within Liechtenstein’s borders, that would be land-locked cubed.
Liechtenstein’s nickname is “The Principality,” which isn’t much shorter, so I’ll just have to learn to spell it. Liechtenstein means “light stone,” and it was what Hugo von Petronell called the castle he built after receiving a fief from the Babenburg margraves. Translating that medieval-speak, it means he did something good for the honchos who ran Austria in the 13th century. But here’s the rub: Liechtenstein Castle is in Austria. Was then, still is now.
But medieval castles are pretty drafty, so the House of Liechtenstein grabbed a bit more land, most notably the finger of land that buffered one side of Austria and the next country over, all amidst the Alps. Munich is to the NE and Innsbruck is to the SE, and Liechtenstein follows the Rhine up to Lake Constance. I was having a hard time finding it on a map, and then I saw that name I recognized: Davos. Liechtenstein is about an hour (by car) NE of Davos. You know, where the millionaires play and carve up the world. Same as it ever was.
In the 1670, the Austrian Empire was massive due primarily to large families and successful dynastic marriages. At that point, it was all empires–Ottomans, Prussians, French, and so forth. Napoleon, came through and wiped out much of these empires, chopping this area up into a thing that he called the Confederation of the Rhine. So many tiny bits, you can barely see li’l ol’ Liechtenstein down there in the blue circle.
If you’re Napoleon–or Hitler, Suleiman, Victoria, Stalin, any of those territory-grabbers–there’s so much to look at that you’d hardly notice that little orange dot in the blue circle. It’s so high up in the Alps, why bother? Davos. If you were tempted, the Prince of Liechtenstein could just pay you to go away. I researched why the big countries didn’t just annex Liechtenstein, and there were two reasons. (a) They thought they did, but who could tell ? Where is it, anyway? (b) They’d want land of “Strategic value” and being the Aerie over there was so hard to lay siege to and gain, and it didn’t get you very much. Lots of cases of white wine.
At one point, when the Principality was flush in the 18th century, Prince Johann Adam Andreas I von Liechtenstein (1657–1712) bought the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci. This was one of the handful of Da Vinci portraits still around. On the other hand, even though the Principality wasn’t attacked during the War, they lost a lot of their fortune, it being tied up into the countries that were destroying each other. In the 1960s, they started selling their art collection, which is how Da Vinci’s masterpiece–which once hung in their dining room (or something)–ended up in the U.S. National Gallery of Art.
I looked up incidences with the military and read that the Swiss accidentally fired off shells at them in a training exercise, then apologized with a case of wine. Later, an army blundered over the border and sent a diplomatic note, and the Liechtenstein guard said, “These things happen.”
Apparently, one other unique thing about Liechtenstein is that the Prince invites everyone up to the castle for wine and cheese every year. There are only 41,000 people in the country, less than in a football stadium, so why not?
Curiously enough, aside from finances and the Prince’s wine cellar, Liechtenstein’s main industries are precision manufacturing. such as for specialized high tech or unique dental and medical tools, and such. During the early part of the 20th century, one guy invented a special hand-held pocket calculator (1935) called the Curta. You would set the pointers, turn a crank, set the pointers again, and it would add two numbers. Like large numbers, like the size of your wine holdings if you needed to translate them from the Swiss franc into the German mark when you need to pay off the border patrol.
Actually, no joke. The calculator was designed by Curt Herzstark, who had Jewish family members and owned a successful factory, which was therefore taken over by the Nazis and he was sent to Buchenwald. He told them he was working on this for the Fuhrer, so they let him continue while at the concentration camp, and the war ended before he finished. Phew! Still working on it, fellas, have another bottle of wine on me!